Bird of Wisdom
by rubypop
Summary: Only Mercy knows that Genji is Reaper's next target in his relentless campaign to eliminate the former members of Overwatch. Will she reach him in time? (Sequel to "That Night.")


**Bird of Wisdom**

 _The bird of wisdom needs two wings to fly.  
_ _They are awareness and equanimity.  
_ — Goerka

Genji sits zazen at Kangbachen Peak, letting the mountain air flow through him. A clean chill has lifted from the glaciers radiating along the pass. His autoregulatory systems respond, humming in concert with the few remaining organs inside him, and his internal temperature adjusts into perfect balance.

It has taken time, much time, for him to sit zazen in these conditions. Every crest of wind, every crumbling rock, even the wingbeats of a distant bird trigger an automatic recalibration of some kind: his aural sensors on high alert, sight sharpening, a constant flow of feedback heightened by years of combat. He once trained himself to respond to such stimuli on instinct, quick and deadly, and it has taken much longer to train this instinct out of him again, to sit peacefully in full lotus, hands folded across the carbon fiber plate of his belly.

The air flows into him, whistling through vents, and out again. He lets himself flow with it. A bird, distant wingbeats, song. He does not need to breathe but does so anyway, practicing _Anapanasati_ , a meditation that so frustrated him in those first sessions with his master. What business did omnics have teaching a man how to breathe? He demanded it with scorn. And Zenyatta simply offered, Breathe. Observe. If your breath is deep, it is deep. If it is shallow, it is shallow. Take note, and continue on.

There was so much that he didn't understand, the fury still rampaging through him, the violence fresh like blood. His time in Blackwatch fed this violence, made him nearly insatiable. In every enemy's face he saw his brother, the naked anger that Genji simply hand-waved for so long, until that first brutal sword-strike cut him from behind, and he turned in shock, not believing. Not enough time to defend himself, only pain, raising his arms to the flurry of cuts, cold steel in hot flesh, the edge striking his face, again, again. Final collapse to the tatami, crawling, blood sinking into the mats. Before fading out, one last thought — Big brother — what have I done?

To this day these memories still rise along the tide of Genji's mind, but practice has made them easy to banish. He releases them into the mountain wind, the soul of the granite, of salt and turquoise, flowers and birdsong. He is one with all around him. He is, after all these years, at peace.

#

Genji is wandering back to the monastery when his aural sensors detect the shifting of gravel. He pauses, translating: footsteps behind him, organic, not omnic. His neural transducers flash, releasing a controlled dose of adrenaline. He calls out, "I know you're there."

The footsteps stop. He turns just as a hesitant voice says, "Genji?"

His temporal lobe alights.

Mercy peers around a snow-dusted outcropping. Her blond hair spills from a fur-lined hood, cheeks flushed pink with cold. She smiles when she sees him, and her eyes shine with tears.

"Oh, thank goodness," she says. "I'm so relieved I've found you."

She rushes toward him and then hangs back, shyly.

"Angela," he says, too surprised by her unexpected appearance to say much more.

"Oh, Genji," she says, taking his hand. "You look well. It's so good to see you."

"I wasn't expecting a visit," he says. Signals flash now through the curve of his limbic system, a dawning happiness, small, growing. "This is quite a surprise." He corrects himself: "A good surprise."

She hugs him, suddenly. The softness of her resonates through the electrodermal field tingling along the surface of his body. He embraces her with some hesitation.

"I'm — happy to see you too," he says. "I guess you liked the tea —"

"Genji, you're in danger," she says. She pulls back. Her eyes are searching, worried. "I had to come warn you in person. There was no other way to reach you in time."

"In danger?"

"It's Gabriel. He's alive. I know it sounds impossible but it's true."

He takes this in, considers. "Not impossible," he says.

She runs her fingers down his arm, following the rise and fall of osseointegrated muscles, all of it her handiwork, once upon a time.

"Come with me," he says, and they walk, arm-in-arm, back to the monastery.

#

He serves her tea in glazed clay cups, and she does not touch it at first, so agitated with the news she has to share. He listens with great calm, sitting half-lotus in the low firelight. When she's finished he urges her to drink, and she sips somewhat unwillingly, distressed by his lack of action.

"We have to leave," she says as soon as she's drained her cup.

He shakes his head. "No. He can come."

"Genji. He's killed nearly twenty of our agents."

"I know him well. I don't fear him."

"He's changed. He's become something else."

"As have I."

"You can't just sit here and wait for him!"

"What will be, will be."

She cries out, "I can't let anything happen to you. You'll die."

Her outburst startles him. He realizes she's wiping tears from her eyes, trying to hide them from him.

"I've watched so many people die," she says. "He won't hesitate. I've saved you once before. Please don't let that go to waste."

"I will fight him," Genji says, alarmed, trying not to show it. "I will not run from him."

"Then I'm staying right here."

"Angela —"

"If you won't come with me, then I'll stay with you. If something happens to you, I won't be able to forgive myself."

Memories stir through him. Troublesome, agitating. He's made her cry so many times — such cruel things he'd say just to trigger this reaction. Guilt thrums at his heart.

"You may stay," he says slowly, "as long as you need."

She wipes her nose. "Really?"

"It's the very least I can do. After all you've done for me."

"Oh, thank you." She grasps his hands. "And please, please reconsider coming with me. He knows where you are. It could put everyone at the monastery in danger."

"The monks are prepared to defend themselves."

She is silent for a moment, biting her lip. She smiles sadly. "I trust you."

Compassion tugs through him, an organic reaction so at odds with the efficiency of his system. He stands to dispel the moment, guiding her with him. "You must be exhausted. We have an empty room — my master left the monastery some time ago, and his room was next to mine. You'll stay there."

She nods in gratitude. Her face betrays a hint of fatigue — even the wings of the Valkyrie suit have begun to droop.

He guides her through the monastery grounds, carrying her things. The light snow crunches beneath their feet, and all else is silent save for the mountain wind. Mercy glances around, taking it all in: the sandstone brickwork, walls painted in shades of turquoise and tangerine, elaborate jhyal windows carved from Nepalese alder.

"Your letters didn't do this place justice," she breathes.

It is all so common to him now, mundane in the ways that home can be, but to her it must seem mystical in its foreignness. He's pleased, in a small way, to share this with her.

Zenyatta's room is dark and austere, cold, empty. Genji realizes, as he lowers Mercy's bags, that the only furniture is a footstool, a small table, and a single mountain poppy in a dusty teacup. Genji chuckles, despite himself.

"I forgot," he says. "There are no beds."

Mercy pauses, then laughs. "You're absolutely right. None of you sleep!"

"We have guest quarters across the grounds. I can bring back some bedding."

"No, I think I'll be fine." She's already tugging drapes from the windows. Moonlight floods the room, touching her hair with a silver glow. "I'm so exhausted, I could sleep on the floor. I'll just make a nest for now and get comfortable tomorrow."

He watches her arrange the drapes into a makeshift futon, and when she shivers in a sudden breeze he realizes that the room must be much too cold. He lights a fire in the small brazier, and when he rises from the floor he feels her arms wrap around him. She presses her face between his shoulderblades.

"I'm so glad you're safe," she says.

Genji stares into the fire. Sparks play off the wall, orange and gold. A thought has been gnawing at him ever since her arrival.

"How did you know he was coming?"

She's silent, her face still buried in his back. She doesn't move a muscle.

"Did he come after you, Angela?"

"I got away," she murmurs against him.

He turns in her arms and cups her cheek. She leans into his palm, again with that sad smile.

"All that matters is that I got away," she says.

She touches his visor, and he takes her hand.

"Please let me see your face," she says.

He hesitates. "Are you sure?"

"It's been so long. I want to see you."

This is me, he thinks, but he lifts his hands to his scalp anyway, feeling for the switches that release the pistons in his visor. The visor lifts, and he removes his faceplate, feeling cold air hit exposed flesh for the first time in months — in years?

Mercy's eyes roam his face, taking in the scarred and furrowed flesh, the low infrared gleam of bionic eyes. She blinks back tears. There is pain in her expression, and self-doubt — he remembers well how she would look at him in this way back in Gibraltar, always in the white noise between surgeries, fluorescent lights and disinfectant, the young, frightened doctor who feared the potential of all this, of what he would soon become, in order to save his life.

"You look well," she says again, the tears flowing free.

He presses his forehead to hers, holding her close.

He hated her for so long. It tore him apart almost as badly as his confusion and despair over Hanzo's attack. He lay in a pool of his own blood until the Blackwatch agents came, summoned from their infiltration of the Shimada family. It was Gabriel Reyes that presented him with the deal, whispering to Genji in low, threatening tones that he could either live to join their operations or bleed out where he lay. He chose the former, gasping his answer through a slug of saliva and blood.

He did not have the time to consider the ramifications of his answer. He knew only flashes of time, moments that still hang like photographs on the walls of his mind: the emergency treatments, bladders of morphine with their plastic tubes, the gleam of needles, wads of gauze pulled from his wounds with shining forceps, stitches, tranquilizers, so much haze. All of this from faceless doctors in scrubs and masks that spoke only to one another in hushed, indecipherable voices.

Angela Ziegler did not appear to him until she sat at his bedside to gently explain the amputations that were about to take place. He blinked at her slowly, muted and uncomprehending with tranquilizers. Guilt flashed across her face, and she fidgeted where she sat, trying to make him understand. He did not. He only came to his senses hours after he awoke from the double transfemoral amputation, and single transhumeral, lashed to the bed by his remaining arm, and he screamed in rage, fighting his restraints until technicians charged in with their needles. As he sank back into oblivion he understood one thing: that the frightened, fidgeting doctor was responsible for all of this.

Genji hugs Mercy tighter now, ashamed of the demon that awoke that day.

"You've always cared so much," he says.

"Too much." She laughs softly. "I was always a little afraid of how much it might affect me. When I received your first letter . . . I was so happy."

Genji remembers this letter. It was the first in a long series of realizations. How he initially set out to forgive her, and in turn laid bare the very root of his anger. In Shambali he touched the truth of existence, no longer a machine with a soul rent from its fleshly shell, but a being of great light, of peaceful complexity. In this way, Angela Ziegler had given him the very gift of enlightenment.

A life wasted, before all of this. That is what Hanzo spat in their final argument. Years of indulging in women and drink, and what to show for it? Their father was dead, and the elders were calling for their leadership. Do as they please, those dried-up husks, and see if I care, Genji scoffed. The anger in Hanzo's eyes seemed to leap through his sword into the gashes of Genji's body, taking root, festering there.

No choice, Hanzo said, before the very first strike. I have no choice.

You're okay, Angela Ziegler whispered to him from beside the hospital bed. You're going to be fine.

That first dissociative morning after the cybernetics had been joined to his brain, the out-of-body effect of artificial homeostasis, the tubes filling with hemoglobin-based plasma, the suffocation of his heart filled anew. He gripped his chest and writhed against the bedsheets, so delirious from the effect that he did not realize the fist he clenched was a neuro-synchronized prosthetic.

Soon the tranquilizers would have no more effect, and sleep became an alien thing, and so he spent night after night in tingling solitude, in near-delirium, his thoughts running wild.

He thought, for so long, that it was the peaks of the Himalayas that finally brought him peace, the teachings of his master, mantra after mantra whispered into the wind. He thought perhaps it was the forgiveness he came to feel for his brother, the impossibility of the situation that Hanzo faced. It was his blossoming friendship with Angela Ziegler that ultimately led him down the path to acceptance: acceptance of himself, of who he once was, and who he will become.

"I think I'm in love with you," Mercy says now, so quietly that any other person would not have heard it.

He stares at her, autoregulators kicking in to steady his pulse. She blushes at once, bright scarlet beneath the silvery gold of her hair.

"Oh," she says, drawing back. "God. Um."

"Angela, I . . ."

"No. Oh, no. It's all right." She steps away from him with a nervous laugh. "Everything's fine. Just listen to me, rambling on. I definitely need some sleep."

His mind, once as clear as the mountain air, is whirring anew with thoughts, with noise, with confusion.

"I'll see you tomorrow. You know. We'll, um." She laughs again.

He takes her hand to pull her gently back. She resists, looking away. He doesn't relent, and she finally goes to him, resting her cheek against his chest. He embraces her and lowers them both to the nest of drapes on the floor.

"Genji," she murmurs.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I just. I don't know what this means."

She whimpers a little against him.

"Please don't cry."

He cradles her face again and peers into her eyes. Her flushed face in the glow of the moonlight stirs something within him, a beauty he never appreciated until now. It has been years since they were so close, and never, ever in such capacity.

"Kiss me," she says.

A decade since he had kissed anyone, been close to anyone at all. He begins, for a just a moment, to shake; neural implants release a stream of catecholamines that still him at once.

"Angela."

"I love you, Genji," she says.

Adrenaline now to the neurons in his gut, butterflies stilled once again by the implants in his brain.

"I love you," she says again, kissing him.

How to describe this feeling? His brain works at the fabric of sensation. Skin-on-skin contact first, hers cold and soft and smooth, so much like a bite of a peach, cold, flushed, the flesh yielding. Neurons like fireworks crackling along strings, a rush of such beauty from his gut to his brain and back again. His blood singing in his veins. So much from a single kiss, the breath that connects them, her locking embrace.

When they part at last they stare at one another in awe.

"Angela," he says. She swallows visibly, apprehensive. "Angela," he says again. He pushes a lock of hair behind her ear. When he lowers his hand he sees a small welt on her neck, round and dark, and around it the impression of teeth.

He blinks, not understanding at first. "Wh—"

And then he sees it, the white face staring at them through the window behind her, the specter dressed in shadows that bleeds now through the latticework.

Mercy's brows knit in confusion.

In an instant Genji has dived across the room, clutching Mercy to his chest. The pile of drapes explodes in a shower of splinters and gunsmoke. Reaper turns, hefting his shotguns. Bullets ricochet from the neon edge of Genji's katana, spraying the walls around them. Genji flees with Mercy through the door, and Reaper dissolves behind them, reforming in a pillar of shade atop the roof of a shrine.

"My staff," Mercy whispers urgently.

Another shotgun blast forces them to leap apart, and Genji charges, flickering past Reaper toward the solitude of the mountain path. Reaper stares after him and then turns to Mercy, locking eyes through the blank cutouts of his mask.

Genji lies in wait on a snowy outcropping, crouched and ready. When the black shape emerges he flings a volley of shuriken. Two hit their mark — Reaper shudders back, briefly — and Genji leaps toward him, sword at the ready. But he's miscalculated — he knows at once that he's moved in too late — and the hot steel of a gun barrel smashes into the side of his face, knocking him to the ground.

Double barrels at his eyes, the armored finger moving to the trigger.

"Genji!"

Suddenly Reaper rears back with an irritated grunt. In a streak of orange Mercy flies, holstering her blaster, and she dives toward Genji, arms outstretched. He reaches for her.

Black mist cascades down, a clawed hand extending from the shadows. Reaper materializes behind Mercy and seizes her around the waist, jamming the muzzle of his gun against her skull.

"Angela!" Genji shouts.

The edge of his blade drags along the ground as he gets up, running faster, faster.

Mercy struggles, fighting for her holster. Reaper utters a curse and flings her down. She stumbles, tripping along the gravel. Reaper raises his gun, tracing the trajectory of her skull.

Genji hears a scream, perhaps imagined, the scream of his brother's blade singing through flesh, perhaps his own scream as he flies forward, a voice that resolves with a deafening gunshot, the wingbeats of a distant bird.

#

Mercy screams when Genji tumbles lifelessly at her feet. He lies prostrate, a gout of synthetic blood gushing from his skull. She collapses before him, groping at his shoulders, trying to turn him over.

Cold then, a torrent of it, Reaper's arms closing around her, pulling her away.

"No!" she screams, fighting him, clawing the air between her and Genji. "No! _Genji!_ "

The still figure remains as such, slowly emptying across the rock.

"Please!" Mercy sobs, and Reaper grips her throat in the crook of his arm, pressing, pressing.

"Please," she says again, fading out. The only response is a long, slow chuckle, which resonates through the blackness that takes her.

###


End file.
